Iron Ships, Iron Men

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘Holy Christ!’ Snibboe muttered. ‘One hundred and thirteen men, just like that. What can have happened?’

  ‘She’s struck a mine,’ Jerry snapped, and looked up at theHartfordfor instructions, as indeed every commander in the fleet was at that moment looking at the flagship. But no orders came from Farragut, and theHartfordstood on, rapidly approaching theBrooklyn, while distantly across the water they could hear the cheers of the Confederates as they realised the magnitude of their success, and hoped to see another. Then the guns resumed firing, for by now theHartfordwas abeam of theBrooklyn, which was still apparently trying to heave to under steam, almost spanning the channel and being swept sideways by the tide.

  ‘What damage have you sustained?’ Farragut bawled through a speaking trumpet as the two vessels closed.

  ‘We have no damage,’ came the reply. ‘But there are torpedoes blocking the channel.’

  Jerry stared at the dark waters of the bay, thought he could see some buoys bobbing just below the surface, as Snibboe had suggested. But the Confederates would hardly have buoyed their torpedoes, either.

  ‘We must stop the fleet and turn back, sir,’ he heard Captain Drayton shouting up at the Admiral. ‘At least until we have reconnoitred the channel, and cleared the obstructions.’

  Farragut looked down at him, then up again at the water in front of them. ‘Damn the torpedoes,’ he shouted. ‘Full speed ahead, Captain Drayton.’

  *

  Snibboe looked at Jerry, who looked back at him. But theHartford was already gathering speed. Jerry grabbed the speaking tube to the engine room. ‘Full speed ahead,’ he said.

  ‘Full speed,’ came the reply. The engineers had no means of knowing what was happening on deck, although they must have heard the noise of the explosion which had sunk theTecumseh; nor did they know that they were in the most vulnerable position of all.

  Together the two ships surged forward, while everyone on board seemed to hold their breaths. The rest of the Federal squadron was following, and even theBrooklyn was now turning to resume her place in the line. The firing from the forts, still engaged with the three surviving monitors, but certainly able to see the Union ships attempting to run by, also seemed to slacken, as their gunners, too, waited for the explosion they anticipated.

  The buoys went by to port; they had not, after all, marked the channel. Then there came a metallic clink from beneath the hull, of either theTippecanoeor theHartford; it was impossible to decide which, but Jerry knew it hardly mattered, as one of them blowing up would certainly cause the destruction of the other. Snibboe and Jerry looked at each other, and then Jerry looked up at the Admiral, still perched in the rigging. Farragut had certainly heard the clink, which should have meant the destruction of his ship and himself, but he gave no sign of it.

  Then there was a slithering sound, also from beneath the hulls. ‘Oh, Christ,’ Snibboe said. ‘It’s sliding along us.’

  Jerry took a long breath, waited for the bang ... and nothing happened. Then the slithering stopped. He looked over his shoulder, at the swirl of water to either side of the wake, and realised that for the second time, to his knowledge, the Confederates had been let down by the quality of their explosives.

  He looked up at Farragut again. The Admiral still had not changed expression. ‘We’re through the forts and the torpedoes, Mr McGann,’ he called. ‘Reduce speed and prepare to engage the enemy squadron.’

  ‘Aye-aye,’ Jerry shouted in sudden wild elation, and rang down to the engine room. The two ships slowed, at the same time turning back to face south east, where the Confederate ironclad, having also waited to see what would happen in the minefield, was now under way, leading her three sloops against the Federal squadron.

  Now the rest of the Federal ships came charging through the narrows. Jerry did not know how many of them had heard the clinks and the metallic scrapings beneath their hulls, but none exploded; only the single mine which had destroyed theTecumsehhad actually detonated. But now the battle was really joined, as the monitors continued to pound away at the fort, which was being badly battered, while the Confederate ram decided to ignore them and deal first of all with the wooden ships, into whose midst she boldly steamed, followed by her gallant escorts, while the Federal guns opened up with everything they possessed. Smoke clouded the morning and the entire air seemed to be filled with flying shot, for theHartfordwas firing her main deck guns over the top of theTippecanoe, the two ships roaring and trembling and grinding together. Snibboe could no longer give orders; his men loaded and fired as fast as they could. First one, and then another, and then the third of the Confederate sloops burst into flames as their masts went by the board. But the ironclad remained unconquered, also blazing away with everything she possessed, her powerful guns doing enormous damage wherever they came to bear. As her principal target was the Federal flagship, theTippecanoe took a fearful battering, and was soon making water, while several of her crew were killed. Through the smoke Jerry could make out the misshapen monster coming closer and closer.

  ‘She means to ram,’ he bawled.

  Farragut heard him, and had also observed the Confederate manoeuvre. ‘Full speed,’ he called down to the deck, and Jerry gave the same orders to his own engine room. The two ships surged forward. TheTennessee tried to swing into them, but she was too slow, and passed under their sterns, still firing her main guns.

  Immediately she headed for the next couplet of Federal ships, but once again was too slow to reach them in time. Yet once again she turned, reminding Jerry of a wounded buffalo, prepared to charge in any direction, snarling her defiance to the last — and certainly capable of inflicting a mortal blow on any ship she did manage to hit with her fearsome beak.

  ‘Fire at her rudder chains,’ Farragut shouted. ‘Commander McGann, use your howitzers.’

  ‘Aye-aye,’ Jerry shouted, his voice hoarse, and sent Snibboe to try the effect of plunging shot. Other ships had also observed the one weakness in the Confederate giant, and were directing their fire aft, and now at last the shot began to take effect. One of the rudder chains snapped, and the ironclad began turning in her own length, very slowly, as the steering jammed. While the Federal ships surrounded her, pouring shot into the armour plating from almost point-blank range.

  ‘Too hot to last, Mr Snibboe,’ Jerry said to his lieutenant, who had rejoined him on the bridge; theTippecanoe was indeed a shambles, with holes shot in her bulwarks and one mast gone, blood staining her decks, water from the pumps gushing over her sides ... but she was still afloat and firing, and now, at last the Confederate guns were falling silent. The ship itself, if dented and bruised in several places, looked capable of continuing the fight, but apart from the damage to her rudder, her control bridge had been shot away, as had her funnel and her mast, and more than one of her guns had clearly been dismounted. She was fighting a lone battle. The forts had surrendered, the rest of the Confederate squadron was destroyed, and the monitors were now on their way to join the wooden ships and keep up the remorseless battering.

  A man reached out of the forward gun-port of theTennessee, waving a white flag. Instantly signals calling for a cease fire climbed theHartford's halliards, and gradually the guns fell silent, while their echoes still rumbled up the bay, and the clouds of smoke slowly began to dissipate.

  ‘Take possession of the enemy, Commander McGann,’ Farragut called.

  ‘Aye-aye, sir,’ Jerry responded, and the two ships slowly eased alongside the crippled juggernaut. Fenders were put out as the hulls touched, and Jerry joined the boarding party Snibboe had assembled on the foredeck, having thoughtfully armed his men with rifles and bayonets, just in case of treachery. But this was one assault Jerry meant to lead in person.

  The warps were thrown, and the three ships were secured. The Confederate sailors who now came on deck looked dazed, but in fact no man in either fleet had ever been in so hot a conflict before. Or ever would again. The deck of theTennesseewas some feet lower than that of theTippeca
noe, but Jerry swung himself down, followed by his men. A warrant officer met him, and saluted. ‘Where is your commander?’ Jerry demanded.

  ‘Admiral Buchanan is wounded, sir,’ the sailor replied. ‘But he is waiting to surrender his ship.’

  Jerry followed him into the ironclad bowels of the ship and paused in horror and disgust. Unlike the scene on board the sloop, where, however awful the dead and wounded, the blood and the stench, the guns had been worked in the open air, the interior of theTennessee had been enclosed throughout the battle. The smoke was beginning to clear, drifting through the gun-ports, but the stench, of cordite and blood and guts, and most of all, of men under extreme stress, lingered; the deck itself was slippery with blood, while the surviving crew members looked like fugitives from hell, their eyes red-rimmed and staring, their features gaunt, their expressions a combination of confusion and resentment that they should have lost the battle.

  The dead and the wounded had been removed to the after end of the deck, and here Jerry found Franklin Buchanan. The Admiral had been wounded by a flying splinter, and had lost a lot of blood, most of which had soaked his uniform, but he insisted upon standing up to present his sword. ‘Jerry McGann,’ he said. ‘What a family affair this has been to be sure. But ... the torpedoes did not stop you.’

  ‘Perhaps we were lucky, sir,’ Jerry acknowledged. But without a commander with the courage and determination of David Farragut, he wondered, would that luck have ever been put to the test?

  As Buchanan perhaps realised. ‘A man generally makes his own luck,’ he observed, and then added, ‘you’d best say goodbye to your brother-in-law.’

  Jerry frowned at him, for a moment not understanding what he meant. Then he turned to look at the three other wounded officers lying beside the Admiral. One of them was clearly dying, almost his entire chest shot away. Jerry dropped to his knees. ‘Rod?’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’ However they had opposed each other, in everything, he had never expected to see his old friend like this. To have travelled so far, and so fast, to have regained Mobile and the woman he loved, all to finish lying in an iron tomb, bleeding his life away.

  Rod’s eyes flopped open, vacantly, glazed with pain, then recognising the huge form above him. ‘Jerry? By God ... three times, and you won every time.’

  ‘We must get you ashore to a surgeon,’ Jerry said.

  Rod’s hand closed on his. ‘No time. There has never been time ...’ he half smiled, and gave a little shake of his head, as if recalling himself to his position. ‘Jerry ... be easy with her. She has had much to suffer.’ He gave a shudder, and closed his eyes again; there was no movement from his chest.

  Jerry stood up.

  ‘If, as I suppose, he was referring to your wife, Commander McGann,’ Buchanan said, ‘I think you should know that Rod risked his own life to save her from being lynched by a mob, not a week ago.’

  Jerry frowned at him. ‘Marguerite? Lynched? Where?’

  ‘Right here in Mobile,’ Buchanan told him. ‘She is still under arrest as a Federal spy. No doubt you will be able to save her from any further misfortune.’

  Jerry gazed at him, and Buchanan looked him in the eye. ‘No doubt you will also always remember,’ the Confederate admiral said, ‘that Rod died, as he lived, a brave and determined man, who perhaps didnot always command the best of fortune.’

  *

  Mobile reminded Jerry of New Orleans, if on a smaller scale. By that evening, the Federal squadron was anchored off the town, and engaged in making repairs, while keeping the land under their guns. The forts had surrendered, and so had the city; the streets, viewed from the ships, were deserted, even if the marines who had formally taken possession of the prize could make out anxious faces peering out at them from behind drawn curtains. The good people of Mobile now wanted only to avoid the destruction of their property.

  By evening the ships themselves had been cleaned up, the wounded taken ashore, and the dead buried. Some twenty men had fallen forever on board theTippecanoe, more than three hundred in the fleet as a whole. Of these, one hundred and thirteen were already entombed in the hull of theTecumseh, on the floor of Mobile Bay. The remainder now joined their comrades, a tribute to the determination of the Confederate defence. With them went the much smaller number of Southern casualties — but those included Rod Bascom.

  Jerry had attended that solemn ceremony, before hurrying back on board theTippecanoe, where the shot holes were at last being patched, and the hull made secure. There he was visited by Admiral Farragut, in the course of a tour of inspection which took in every ship of the fleet, and which had lingered longest on the gunboat which had been the most badly damaged of any Federal vessel. During the inspection he had instructed her commanding officer to go and see to the safety of his wife and son. This was an order Jerry had been strangely reluctant to obey. When he protested that the repairs to his ship should come first, however, Farragut waved the words aside. ‘You have an equal duty to them, Jerry,’ he said. ‘I am sure Lieutenant Snibboe can continue the work here during your absence.’

  So there was nothing for it. Jerry donned a clean uniform, had Simpson give his sword a polish, and was rowed ashore in the captain’s gig, one of the two boats which had survived the battle with theTennessee. Marines waited on the dockside to salute him as he climbed the steps, and he looked left and right, at the street, the houses, the one or two people, mostly small boys, who had ventured out to look at their conquerors. They at least could not have been part of a lynch mob, even if they could have been onlookers.

  He went towards them, and they gaped at him, but did not run away. ‘I am looking for the house of Mr Wilbur Grahame,’ he said.

  ‘His daughter’s a Yankee spy,’ said one of them; the other gave him a hasty shove, warning him to watch what he said. Jerry almost smiled. ‘That’s the one I want. Come along now. Tell me where she is, or I’ll lock you up.’

  ‘Down there, mister,’ the second boy shouted, pointing to a narrow alleyway. ‘Then turn right and you can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thank you, sonny,’ Jerry said, and turned away.

  ‘We ain’t beat yet,’ bawled the other boy. ‘You’ll see, bluebelly. We ain’t licked yet.’ Jerry half checked, then continued on his way. He knew that he would feel the same, were he on the losing side. He walked through the alleyway and emerged on to a wide street, turned right, as instructed, and soon found the house. Like all of its neighbours, it was heavily shuttered, and the street itself was deserted. Suddenly his heart began to pound, quite painfully. Had Wilbur Grahame and his family fled again? And would he be relieved if they had? He couldn’t make up his mind about that. He had too heavy a burden of duty to perform. Even about Joey, perhaps. Suppose the boy had been brought up to believe that Rod was his father?

  He took a long breath, opened the gate, and walked up the path. He knocked on the door, and knocked again, his agitation growing. But then he heard the scraping of a key in the lock, and a moment later the wood swung in. ‘Ow, me gawd,’ the black girl said. ‘Captain McGann?’

  He remembered her from Martine’s. ‘Connie, is it?’ Still working for the Grahames, he thought, no doubt in ignorance, or bewilderment, at being freed by a proclamation issued in a distant, and recently foreign, capital. He wondered how long it would take her to wake up to reality. ‘Aren’t you going to let me in?’

  She hesitated, licked her lips, inspected his uniform and sword, and then stepped aside. Jerry went into the hall, looked at the empty staircase, and then at the drawing room doorway, where Wilbur Grahame stood. A Wilbur Grahame who might have doubled in years since the last time Jerry had seen him, just before leaving Martine’s on the day of his wedding, four years before — in a moment of equal anger.

  He saluted.

  Wilbur blinked at him, ‘Heard the guns,’ he said. ‘Terrible. Saw you on the street ... By God ... what do you mean to do?’

  ‘I am looking for my wife and son,’ Jerry told him. ‘I am assuming they are
here?’ Wilbur’s chin moved, slowly, up and down. ‘She’s upstairs. Under arrest. But the marines have gone.’

  ‘They have been taken prisoner.’

  Wilbur did not seem to comprehend that. ‘Nearly lynched, she was,’ he muttered. Jerry also nodded. ‘So I gathered from Admiral Buchanan. Well, her safety is now a Federal matter. The charges against her will be dropped.’

  ‘What do you mean to do?’ Wilbur asked again. ‘Rod Bascom ...’

  ‘Rod Bascom is dead,’ Jerry told him, and went up the stairs. They creaked beneath his weight, and he presumed everyone in the house was listening to his approach. Had they also watched him from their windows, as he came up the street?

  He opened the first door, gazed at the creature on the bed. Claudine was sitting up, wrapped in an undressing robe, knees drawn up, staring at him. Her hair was tangled and greasy, her cheeks puffy and blotched, her eyes bloodshot. Anything less like the quite beautiful girl he remembered from Martine’s was impossible to imagine.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I have a painful duty to perform.’

  She gazed at him, her eyes slowly gaining hostility as she recognised him.

  ‘Rod, your husband, has died,’ he said. ‘Most gallantly, in action.’

  Claudine’s lips drew back from her teeth to complete the transformation of her face to hideous collapse. ‘Yankee scum,’ she spat. ‘Get out of my room.’

  Jerry closed the door, tried the next one, looked at a woman who was sitting in a chair, fully dressed, drinking rum punch and turning the pages of a book. She raised her head to look at him; her hair was quite white, her expression quite vacant. Then she also recognised him, and gave a bright smile. ‘Jerry McGann,’ she said. ‘How nice of you to call. Have you brought Marguerite with you?’